1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of computer systems, in particular, microprocessor based computer systems connected as a network. More specifically, the present invention relates to installing software products and configuring operating environments on these computer systems.
2. Background
As cost performance of microprocessor based computer systems and network technology continues to improve, their popularity continues to increase. However, before each of these powerful low cost computer systems can be put to productive use, typically a slate of software products including an operating system has to be installed on the computer system, and the operating environment has to be properly configured. Both the typical slate of software products that get installed and the number of operating environment configuration decisions that have to be made continue to grow with the power and capacity of these low cost computer systems. Increasingly, it is not uncommon to find organizations having to install a large number of software products and configure operating environments on tens, hundreds, or even thousands of machines, While the installed software and the operating environments are not uniform across all machines within the organization, they tend to be substantially similar within a class of machines, such as accounting's workstations or engineering's workstations.
One common solution to the problem is to have a typical slate of software products preinstalled and the operating environment pre-configured in a typical configuration at the factory. Experience has shown that this approach is satisfactory only to a minority number of users. The majority of users find themselves to be atypical and having to reinstall the software products and reconfigure the operating environment in order to meet their needs. Additionally, the approach is costly to the manufacturers. It forces earlier cutoff of software development. When changes to one or more of the software products are necessary, existing inventories in the distribution channels will have to be recalled, their software products reinstalled with the latest revisions, and their operating environments reconfigured taking into account the latest revisions. Furthermore, the factory preinstall approach really does not address the need of system administrators who have to install software products and configure operating environments of a class of similar machines.
Thus, it is desirable to automate software installation and operating environment configuration on computer systems, in particular, microprocessor based computer systems connected in a network. It is further desirable if automated software installation and operating environment configuration can overcome the manufacturing disadvantages of the factory pre-install approach. It is further desirable if the needs of system administrators who have to install software products and configure operating environments for classes of similar machines can be addressed. As will be disclosed, the method and apparatus of the present invention for automatically installing software products and configuring operating environment on a computer system achieves the above described desired results.